1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a management apparatus, a management method, and a computer-readable medium and, more particularly, to a method of managing a device such as an image forming apparatus using multicast IPsec.
2. Description of the Related Art
The conventional IPsec standards aim at ensuring reliability between nodes using a secret key, and has specifications difficult to handle in multicast for performing communication among three or more nodes. RFC5374, [online], [searched on Oct. 7, 2011], Internet <URL: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5374> proposes specifications of multicast IPsec for exchanging information on the public key base to make the IPsec usable in multicast.
In the multicast IPsec, a multicast group is registered in a server called a GCKS (Group Controller and Key Server) for performing multicast group management and key management. A device registered in the group can communicate using the multicast IPsec by receiving a key distributed from the GCKS. An example of related art using the multicast IPsec is Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2008-135826.
On the other hand, a device management apparatus for managing one or more devices such as image forming apparatuses via a network can generally group management target devices and manage them. A group of management target devices will be referred to as a device group hereinafter. The device management apparatus can execute arbitrary management processing on the device group basis.
The device management apparatus can execute management processing of a plurality of management target devices at once by using the multicast IPsec.
In the apparatus for managing one or more devices such as image forming apparatuses via a network, a contradiction may arise if the device group including one or more devices does not match the multicast group.
For example, assume that the device management apparatus sets management information for a plurality of devices belonging to an arbitrary device group at once. If a device belongs to a multicast group different from that of the device management apparatus, the management information setting using the multicast IPsec cannot be done for the device.
In addition, if a device that is not included in the management targets of the device management apparatus belongs to the same multicast group as that of the management target devices, the setting transferred by the multicast IPsec is distributed to the device as well.